I was watching my weekly geek fest videos when on The Ben Heck Show comes a commercial for a new credit card sized computer called the Raspberry Pi that was developed using a Broadcom BCM2835 System-On Chip running Linux. Below are the specifications for the board:

What is amazing is that this board looks to have enough power to do full 108op playback. The team over at OpenELEC have already ported a version of thier software to the device and the video demonstration looks amazing!

Granted the device does not have a lot of memory so you’re not going to be running games on it or using it to do massive computing tasks, but I thik the Raspberry Pi Foundation has come up with the perfect general purpose computer that can be used in all sorts of consumer devices. Add a large enough SD Card, an enclosure, a phone charger and a bluetooth adapter and you have the makings of a set top box for well under $100.

So in the spirit of being on the leading edge of technology, I’ve pre-order one to give it a spin and see just what it’s capable of. I’ll post more once I get the device in.